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The first metaphor for God in the bible is the wind

• The very first metaphor used for God in the Bible is ruach Elohim—a wind of God, or Godly wind. The word “ruach” means both wind and spirit, and is also associated with breath. The first human becomes a living being with the beautiful metaphoric image of God blowing the “breath of life” directly into him. Ruach connotes a sense of God’s presence within us, as the life-force that beats in our hearts and flows through our cells like oxygen. It is easily incorporated into traditional Hebrew blessings, where we can substitute ruach ha-olam—Spirit/Wind of the Universe— for “melech ha-olam/Ruler of the Universe.” This metaphor comes alive as we listen to the shofar, the sound itself a manifestation of breath, a symbol of the Godly potential that flows through—that is breathed through—each of us.  Rabbi Toba Spitzer

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In primitive cultures, God was seen as a personification of the wind

• Almost all primitive cultures had their gods. Gods were personifications of the sea, the winds, the lightening, the volcanoes, and other natural forces which are outside the control of humans. Rollie Smith

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Like the wind, we can’t see God but his effects are felt

• Can you see God? You haven’t seen him? I’ve never seen the wind. I see the effects of the wind, but I’ve never seen the wind. There’s a mystery to it. Billy Graham

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We can know God by the wind

• Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. Thomas Merton
• If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand. Eldo Roshi
• God comes to each of us in the form we can best perceive Him. To you, just now, He was a heron. To someone else, He might come as a flower or even a breeze. Richard Zimler
• The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing. Ramakrishna
• God in the whizzing of a pleasant wind Shall march upon the tops of mulberry trees. George Peele
• God’s miracles are to be found in nature itself; the wind and waves, the wood that becomes a tree – all of these are explained biologically, but behind them is the hand of God. Ronald Reagan

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God is power to be harnessed like the wind

• God is with us to be utilised. His Power, His Love, His Thought, His Presence, must be at our disposal, like other great forces, such as sunshine and wind and rain. We can use them or not, as we please. That we could use them to their full potentiality is, of course, not to be thought of; but we can use them in proportion to our ability. Basil King

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The wind of God is always blowing but we must put up the sail

• The wind of God’s grace is always blowing, but you must raise your sail. Vivekananda
• The winds of God’s grace are always blowing, it is for us to raise our sails. Ramakrishna
• God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. Saint Augustine
• The wind of God is always blowing… but you must hoist your sail. Francois Fenelon
• The wind of God’s grace is incessantly blowing. Lazy sailors on the sea of life do not take advantage of it. But the active and strong always keep the sails of their minds unfurled to catch the favorable winds and thus reach their destination very soon. Mahatma Gandhi

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God is breath

• In love’s God-like breathing, there’s the innermost aspect of the universe. Alexander Scriabin
• Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. Kabir
• He is God, He is The Absolute, He is Heaven, He is Eternal, the Supreme, the Self-luminous, He alone is All, He is Breath, He is Time and Fire, He is the Moon. Kaivalya Upanishad
• I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath of His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand, drawing me, leading me, grasping me; because I possess an inner consciousness of a particular providence and of a universal mind that marks out for me the course of my own destiny. Miguel de Unamuno
• God is all that is. Everything. Everything. Breath, life. Just get Webster’s Dictionary and throw it on the floor. It’s everything… God is everything. Iyanla Vanzant
• My life was changed in one breath from God. Donna Summer
• The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man’s soul. Music is the language of God. Ludwig van Beethoven

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The word “soul” means breath

• The word Atman (Soul) means the breath of life. Atman is the principle of man’s life, the Soul that pervades his being, his breath, his intellect and transcends them. Atman is what remains when everything that is not the self is eliminated. It is the unborn and immortal element in man, which is not to be confused with body, mind or intellect. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

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Enthusiasm is God’s breath

• Enthusiasm, like the breath of God, transforms everything. Gail Sher

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We are animated by God’s breath

• In our story, humans first show up in a garden where we are being formed out of dirt and animated by God’s very breath. Divine presence fills and awakens us. This fundamental narrative, given us from the beginning, tells us who we are. We are made of stardust (dirt) and we are made of God-dust (the breath of God). We are fashioned of earth, and we are made alive by the breath of the Divine. We may hide our divine nature well, but it is our intrinsic nature. Divinity is woven into our very beings, inextricably bound up within us. Doug Hammack
• If our starting point for thinking about human nature draws from the very opening scene of our story, “made in the image of God,” and if our starting point is that the very stuff of God was breathed into us from the beginning, it changes everything! Doug Hammack
• So now, how did God produce this world?… The fable is that he breathed upon us. In his breath, his wind, came moisture and things began to grow… a message of hope. Nothing physical. How do you intend for your breath to become a work of art? The only way I can see it is that you prevent your breath from becoming a structure. As soon as your breath takes on the form of a room, you are a carpenter; you’re not God. Milton Resnick
• In the beginning when all was wild and chaotic, the “ruach Elohim,” God’s breath or spirit, moved over the waters. (Gen. 1.1-2). God breathed his spirit into Adam. The Pentecost story draws on the same imagery to describe the coming of the Spirit upon the disciples assembled in the upper room. The wind rushed into the room, whipping up their courage: “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting … and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages” (Acts 2: 2, 4).  The Holy Spirit is like the wind, like breath, that moves, pushes and acts upon us. No one controls the wind or decides where it will blow next. You can only be attentive to the power of God, like a sailor taking her measure of the wind driving her sailboat.  John P. Arnold

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God is our very breath

• In God, I move and breathe and have my being. Oprah Winfrey
• God is ever present. He’s in every breath, in every step. He’s here, always, always. Jill Scott
• He (man) is both dust of earth and breath of God. Billy Graham
• Did God make man in a breath of holy fire, or did he crawl on up out of the muck and mire? Bruce Springsteen
• Calmness is the living breath of God’s immortality in you. Paramahansa Yogananda
• All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God. Hermann Hesse
• What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out. Therefore all you need is to understand the one breath that makes up the world. Stephen Mitchell
• The only energy that has any power in your life is the gift of breath from God. Iyanla Vanzant
• Be happy. God gave you a breath to breathe every day. You don’t need to be mad about nothin’. Lamar Jackson
• Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him. Philip James Bailey

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God is the breath that moves through us, the flute

• God is the breath moving through a cosmic flute and each living form is a hole in that flute, each providing its own unique note. Anthony Lambert
• God, when awake in a human form, expresses through the form, like breath through a flute, as a flow of love, peace, creativity, joy and wonder and in so doing, greatly blesses the world. Anthony Lambert
• I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through listen to this music. Haziz
• The breath of the flute player: does it belong to the flute? Rumi
• The fluteplayer puts breath into a flute, and who makes the music? Not the flute. The Fluteplayer! Rumi
• This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new. Rabindranath Tagore
• All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life. Wayne Muller

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